Andrew Leamy

Andrew Leamy (1810 Drom, County Tipperary, Ireland - April 21, 1868 in Hull, Quebec) was a pioneer industrialist and community leader in Wright's Town, Lower Canada, which became Hull, Quebec and is now incorporated into the City of Gatineau in the National Capital Region of Canada.

Andrew Leamy was the son of Michael Leamy and Margaret Marshall, who emigrated to Bytown with Andrew, his two brothers James and Michael and his two sisters Catherine and Anne in the 1820-1830 time frame.

The name Andrew Leamy is as commonly associated with the commercial and industrial development of the City of Hull as is the name of Philemon Wright. Like most of the other illustrious names of that pioneer era - names like Nicholas Sparks and J.R. Booth - Andrew Leamy began his business life as an employee of the Old Squire Wright, in 1830, living and working on Wright's Columbia Farm and learning his future trade as a lumber baron. Andrew also worked for Peter Aylen, taking his rafts to Quebec City.

In 1833, his close ties with the Wright family - and Nicholas Sparks no doubt - led to his eventual marriage to Philemon Wright Jr.'s daughter, Erexina, who had become Nicholas Spark's adopted daughter after Wright Jr.'s death.

In 1835, after a few years of frugality and good economy in Wright's employ, Leamy had saved enough to purchase 200 hectares of land from Philemon Wright - land that included Wright’s original 'Gatteno Farm' (sic). In 1853, Leamy began his own enterprise as a lumberman by building a mill on the south shore of Columbia Pond, as it was first named, and the lake became known as Leamy Lake thereafter. Leamy dug a canal to connect the lake to the Gatineau River to facilitate the transportation of logs to his sawmill. The mill, which was the second steam-powered mill in the region - one of only two - was entirely destroyed when a boiler exploded, killing one of Leamy's sons. It was never rebuilt.

Andrew Leamy was a devout Catholic and, in the tradition of the Wright family, gave much of his time to the social and cultural development of the small developing village of Wright's Town. According to the Drouin records of Notre-Dame Parish, he was a popular best man at weddings of his workers and godfather for many families. He worked hand-in-hand with Père Reboul to achieve the emancipation of school governance for the county. The result was the creation of the county's first independent School Commission in 1866, of which he was elected the first President.

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